Sorry if it's been too long since the last update.  I just got a fictionpress.net account that I've been working on.  Sorry.  Well, at any rate, thank you Trafalger!  And no, my parents have pledged not to shut these stories down.  It was mainly that I didn't ask them about the blog before getting it.  Damn...I'm bored...I want a boyfriend!  I want to marry Davey Havok from AFI.  I want to carry his children.  Okay, that's a stretch.  Well at any rate, R/R my fictionpress stuff too if you're bored!  Well, if you're bored enough to read this, you're bored enough to read the back of a shampoo bottle.

Minerva came in last night.  When I heard her knock on the door I hid the bottle of wine under the bed (if I remember correctly I was drinking right out of it).  I let her in.  She sat in a chair, and I sat on the bed.

            "Hello, Severus."

            "Hi."

            "You're drinking, right?"

            "No."

            "I can smell it."  I had a headache, and I didn't want to play those games.

            "Yeah, yeah, what do you want anyways?"

            "Do you want to talk to me?"

            "What?"

            "You hugged me.  You cried.  Doesn't that mean something?"

"No, I didn't.  You're imagining things."  I think she started to shake from some random emotion.

            "Don't you remember?  Were you too drunk?"

            "Yes, yes, I'm sure that's it, now stop making me your pity project and get the hell out."

            "I don't hate you.  I like you.  You're a good person, I know."

            "Well, what do you like about me?  Come on…name one thing."  She swallowed.

            "You're brave, Severus.  You're one of the bravest people I know, and I don't think you get enough recognition for that.  I know what you did for the Order.  You're just so brave."  That one shocked me.  I usually just push off any sort of compliment because they're never true, but she was just so determined-sounding about it that I didn't immediately dissuade it.  But then I did.

            "I'm not brave.  I just don't care."  She swallowed again.

            "You are brave.  And that's a brave thing to say."

            "No, it's not.  I'm drunk.  Just go off and do…something.  Whatever it is that you people do."

            "You people?"

            "You know…you people who can pretend to be happy a hell of a lot better than I can."  She swallowed again.  "Why are you swallowing?"

            "I…never mind.  Some people actually are happy, Severus.  You can be too."  I really should think before I speak.  I never do.

            "You're lying, Minerva.  You're playing with me.  You'll be my friend for a while, and then you'll hurt me."  She started to sniffle.  A tear glinted in the candlelight from the corner of her eye.  I froze.  "I'm sorry, I'm sorry, now you hate me, you do, I'm sorry…" She went over and sat next to me on the bed.  She wouldn't touch me.

            "Severus, I don't hate you, I just…sometimes I feel part of what other people are feeling."

            "You don't know."

            "I don't.  I just can't imagine what it's like to feel like you do."

            "Because I'm such a freak?"  Then she hugged me.  She finally hugged me.  I'll never know why.

            "I don't know what to do.  I don't know what to say."

            "Then leave.  Get away from me.  If it makes you happy."

            "What do you want, Severus?  Don't you want to be happy?"

            "Nobody's happy."

            "I am."

            "If you're wasting your time with me, no you're not."

            "This isn't time-wasting…this is very worthwhile."

            "It's the opposite of worthwhile.  Go.  Leave."  I think she got angry then.

            "I'm not leaving, dammit!"  I was shocked.  I suppose.

            "Go!  Go!  I don't want to do this!"  She just stopped talking, I think, and in the morning I woke up and I was tucked into my bed like a little kid and my bottle of wine was gone.